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This Sliding Bar can be switched on or off in theme options, and can take any widget you throw at it or even fill it with your custom HTML Code. Its perfect for grabbing the attention of your viewers. Choose between 1, 2, 3 or 4 columns, set the background color, widget divider color, activate transparency, a top border or fully disable it on desktop and mobile.

Two Things Everyone Should Know About Neuroscience

Two Things Everyone Should Know About Neuroscience

Continued from Part 1, here are 2 more things all yogis should know about science:

4. Brain imaging doesn’t measure your thoughts.

Contrary to popular opinion, brain imaging technologies are not a direct measure of your thoughts or feelings. You know those pretty pictures of brains “lighting up” all kinds of pretty colors? Well, in my opinion, they’re one of the most misleading toolsjournalists use to lure readers to their articles.

Pictures have a powerful effect on the mind. Something about seeing a brain “changing” before our own to eyes seems to make it all the more real. What most yogis don’t realize is that those images do not depict brain activity per se, but rather the magnetic characteristics of blood in about twenty peoples’ brains. Say what?! Let’s break it down, Iyengar-style:

Well, as you probably remember from high school biology class, when you inhale your lungs bring lots and lots of oxygen molecules into your bloodstream. Your circulatory system then bathes the rest of your organs and tissues with oxygen-rich blood, and those sweet little O2 molecules are crucial fuel for processes like — you guessed it — brain activity. Yes, it really is all about the breath!

Where does the magnetism come in?

Neuroscientists have figured out a way to measure whether blood in different areas of your brain has oxygen based on its particular magnetic characteristics. Blood with less oxygen (deoxygenated blood) gives off a stronger magnetic field than oxygenated blood (thanks to hemoglobin). So, in very simplified terms, what fMRI does is (1) shoot giant radio waves through your skull and (2) compare the magnetic echoes (resonances) that bounce back. From those echoes, scientists can determine which areas of your brain have oxygenated or deoxygenated blood at a given time.

Why should we care whether blood has oxygen or not?

In theory, we should find deoxygenated blood in brain regions where neurons are active. The idea is that when neurons fire, they use oxygen to acquire energy.

If I lost you in all that, here’s the big takeaway: Brain images can be severely misleading. Neuroscience studies are vastly oversimplified by the press. Even science is chock full of uncertainty (and that’s not a bad thing!).

5. Scientists are biased too.

Scientists by themselves are not objective. Personal biases, funding organizations (pharmaceutical companies,governmental institutions, and even the military), and pressure to uphold the status quo (i.e. do research that supports existing theories) have a strong influence on the topics and methods of scientific research today. When I realized this as a young and developing researcher, I began to question the findings of many studies cited by the popular press. What I found rocked the very foundation of my “faith” in science.

I believe the scientific method to be one of the greatest intellectual contributions to the modern era, but my experience has been that science is not always practiced with integrity. I have seen researchers fudge data. I have seen how funding sources skew which studies get done. In short, I’ve seen how the move to make money off of human suffering (“your sadness is a brain disease… here, let me give you a pill for that!”) has eroded the validity of a beautifully comprehensive method for understanding the world around us.

We forget that the practice of science is carried out by human beings with all the same faults and frailties as Johnny-down-the-street. Researchers have caught red-handed lying about the results of their studies. Corporate interests have become so engrained into the structure of our academic institutions that it’s ever more difficult to conduct experiments not skewed by watchful funders. Many professors are so busy trying to achieve tenure and churn out as many publications as possible that they lack time to sit back and just wonder… think outside the box… consider the possible cracks in our existing theories about how the world works.

Now that does all this mean we toss up our hands and say “Science is useless! Let’s just think positive thoughts and meditate our way to a a cure for cancer”? Absolutely not. Quite the contrary, I believe scientific research is an enormously valuable tool. My intention with this article is not to disparage research, but to encourage yogis to get more informed and involved in conversations about science. Read the research studies on yoga and the brain. Subscribe to a neuroscience blog. Educate yourself.

I’d also like to see more scientists communicating directly with the public in language they understand, so regular people aren’t being asked to accept the findings of science on faith. Wasn’t it Einstein who said, “If you can’t communicate it simply, you don’t understand it well enough“?

Moreover, I think we could all benefit from a bit more transparency in research. I love the idea many science bloggers have proposed: do away with the hierarchical peer-review system and create an online review process in which other scientists can respond to papers, with comments weighted based on their publication records.

I want to be clear, I’m not at all trying to suggest we need a different method for examining the natural world altogether. I think modern science, as well as many of the other contemplative traditions, provide a fantastic method for investigating both the natural world and our subjective experience. My goal in this article was to point out how most REPORTING of science falls short — it often creates an illusions certainty and infallibility that fail to capture what’s actually happening in research labs.

A more transparent system that sets the stage for more accountability and honesty among scientists would, in my opinion, help eliminate many of the problems I highlight in this article. Most importantly though, I think we as journalists and readers need to be willing to acknowledge the inherent uncertainties in scientific findings. There’s nothing wrong with saying “maybe”, “it’s most likely”, or “we just dont know yet”. Instead of “science proves yoga works”, how about “researchers find yoga improves symptoms of _____.”

That, to me, is a much more honest approach to examining the natural world.